Chantal Thomass has built a reputation for her tantalizing, flirtatious
clothes. Much of her work pays a titillating homage to exotic underwear;
there is, however, never a blatant display of overt sexuality. Instead
there is always a hint of the naughty schoolgirl or a sensuous allusion
to the charms of the teenage seductress, like Carole Baker in
Baby Doll
or Sue Lyon in
Lolita.
The clothes are often fitted or skimpy, trimmed in frills, ribbons, and
flounces, and always produced in the most sophisticated fabrics.

Thomass had no formal training in fashion design, but as a child,
dressing up proved enough of a motivation for her to design her own
clothes, which were made by her mother. She began her fashion career at
18, designing clothes for girls of her own age. A year later, she
married Bruce Thomass, who had studied at the École des Beaux Arts
in Paris. Together they formed a small fashion company called Ter et
Bantine manufacturing and selling young and unusual clothes. They
created dresses from hand-painted scarves, designed by Bruce, and
succeeded in selling them to Dorothée Bis. Thomass also designed
dresses with flounced pinafores, schoolgirl collars, and balloon sleeves
that were sold from their first boutique on Boulevard Saint Germain in
1967. Actress and French cultural symbol Brigitte Bardot became a
regular customer, as did designer Jacqueline Jacobson, who ordered over
a hundred dresses in one season alone.

The business was sufficiently successful for the pair to found the
Chantal Thomass label in 1975, with Chantal as creative director and
Bruce as licensing and sales director. As the profile of the company
rose, so did the price of the clothes, although they retained their
young, enchanting, and highly feminine style. Thomass has often been
motivated by the progression of her own life. Her pregnancy in 1981 led
her to develop a line of maternity clothes. As her daughter began
growing, Thomass developed a childrenswear division that retained many
of the distinctive and theatrical elements of her mainline collections.
The company moved into licensing in 1985, joining forces with the
Japanese group World as a financial partner. Licensed products were
available throughout Europe and Japan and included fine leather goods,
tights, women's shoes, eyewear, watches, children's
ready-to-wear, scarves, lingerie, and swimwear. There were soon a dozen
Thomass boutiques throughout France.

Thomass retains her eminence by reflecting fashion changes and adapting
her look to suit the prevalent mood. A youthful feel to her clothes has
kept her in the forefront of leading Paris-based designers. Yet the
mid-to late 1990s were a turbulent time for Thomass. In 1995 she was
fired from her own label, of which she owned a minority interest, in a
dispute with Japanese majority owner World Company. World planned to
continue the label, publicizing aggressive expansion plans, and released
further designs, which were considered more commercial than
Thomass' typical work. A year later, however, the label went into
bankruptcy and liquidated its assets.

Thomass, meanwhile, stopped designing lingerie for a time, leaving the
category that had become her main focus. She spent the next four years
as a consultant to companies such as Austrian hosiery maker Wolford
(where she designed a swimwear line), Victoria's Secret,
Antinéas, and Rosy, often in categories outside lingerie. In late
1998 after a lawsuit against World was resolved, Thomass reacquired the
rights to her name and found a backer, the Dim division of Sara Lee,
which took a two-thirds ownership of her company and assumed
manufacturing duties for the core lingerie lines. Her first products
under the relaunch were available in 1999. Her reentry into lingerie
design was marked by controversy when a Galeries Lafayette window
display featuring live models wearing her lingerie drew protests from
feminists and other groups in Paris.

Among the best-known designers in France—a retrospective of her
work at Marseille's Musée de Mode in 2001 included 230
pieces—Thomass also has a strong business in Japan and began her
entry into the U.S. market in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with her
first Saks Fifth Avenue trunk show taking place in April 2001. Licensed
lines, distributed primarily in Europe and Japan, include eyewear, among
other categories.

Thomass remains best known for her sexy, comfortable lingerie, often
done in black but sometimes pastels or white, or with a layering of
different colors and materials. She often shows her line to retail
buyers using live dioramas featuring models doing everyday tasks in
their lingerie.
Women's Wear Daily
(5 February 2001) termed her display at the Salon International de la
Lingerie as "a naughty peep show featuring saucy vignettes of
boudoir voyeurism." In the future, Thomass planned to expand into
apparel again, focusing on lingerie-inspired looks.

—Kevin Almond;

updated by Karen Raugust

User Contributions:

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: